The single player mode puts you in command of a squad of Navy SEALs and makes excellent use of the headset packaged with the game (which retails for $60). Teamwork is key for successful completion of the missions, and the headset helps it flow very well. Your team responds to a set number of command words, and while I was skeptical of the voice recognition possibilities it worked almost flawlessly. It's almost as much fun to issue orders to your team and watch them carried out with machine-like efficiency as it is to do the dirty work yourself. Early on you're better off spending your time memorizing the different command words and using your team to its fullest potential, because they're a lot more effective than you. At first I got strange looks from the dog every time I talked into the headset, "Bravo, Fire At Will," but it became second nature after a while.

The controls take a little getting used to despite a familiar setup. After a few sessions you'll be able to switch weapons, peek around corners and use your scope and night vision without missing a beat. Once you've got the basics figured out, you'll have time to take a look around you and notice some pretty lame A.I. in the bad guys: Guards are more oblivious than the stiffs at Buckingham Palace.

But no one is really buying SOCOM for the single player game, are they? The 12 single player missions serve as little more than practice for going online and taking on opponents with real brains (most of them). You'll need to get a PS2 network adapter to play ($40 retail) and setting it up is pretty easy (read our review here). After that all you need is a broadband connection to get online with SOCOM. The PS2 adapter works with dial-up connections but SOCOM does not, and it's probably just as well that Sony's first online game requires a fast user connection. They've got enough issues to iron out without worrying about some poor sap with a 56k.

If you've ever played online with a PC, the next step will be familiar. Choose a geographical area and keep choosing until you find a server with room for you. You'll get a list of current games, number of players, and the preferences set up for each. Pick out what's best for you and you're playing, right? Not quite. Even though some games have room for more players, you'll get a fair amount of "busy server" messages.

Once you're on, you'll be thrown in with the rest of your team and see everyone else's name floating above their heads. If you see a man without a name, they aren't on your team. If you founded the session, you had the chance to set the type of game (death match, demolitions, etc) and other preferences, like passwords, which let in only those players you know will be online and have probably invited to play. Otherwise, you play the hand your dealt with the team you're given. There are player rankings but you can't see them to decide how difficult a given session might be, so you're shooting in the dark, so to speak.

There are lots of tactics and weapons to choose from as you fight for your online life, but it boils down to not being seen and not missing you're targets. It's all about control and those with the better aim will be the ones left standing. Unless you've spent some serious time honing your skills, you're not much more than fodder for the first few missions. There's nothing unfamiliar about the controls in SOCOM once you've played a few single player missions, but it's still a difficult game. The analog control is very sensitive, so aiming is a challenge. There's no battle armor or shields, so if you get shot, you'll most probably die. Realistic? Absolutely (from what I've heard of getting shot, that is). But just like some sports games, that might not be the kind of thing you're looking for. If you're one of the many less experienced players out there you'll get nailed early and spend a lot of your time online watching the guys with "mad skillz." It's a high level of difficulty that not everyone will enjoy.

The animations are disappointing. Shooting someone should offer some satisfaction, but in SOCOM the dead man just slumps over. He doesn't even slump over right away, there's a significant delay and almost no reaction to being shot. So even if you aren't looking for blood and gore, some kind of sign that you hit your target would be nice.

Which brings up some frustrating aspects of SOCOM. Once you die, you can either become a ghost (follow another player and watch from his perspective) or leave the game entirely. If you leave you have to start over and hope you find another game. Otherwise, you watch someone else play. Another issue is the relatively frequent dumping by the server. At the end of a game you might find yourself inexplicably tossed back to the game's title screen as if you'd just inserted the game into your PS2. This doesn't just happen when you've been online for a long time, so there's no reason to think that it's being done purposefully to make room for new players. It even happens in the middle of a game.

Oddly enough, even though everyone is on some kind of broadband, there's still a noticeable amount of lag. Even if everyone was on a cable connection at a peak time of day, there shouldn't be this much lag. It seems to be a server problem, and hopefully Sony's infrastructure will improve over time.

SOCOM's headset adds a new wrinkle to online cooperative play. By pressing and holding the "O" button you can enjoy up to ten seconds of talk time heard by your teammates. Most people are hard to understand, and I'm sure that's as much because of the connections as it is people not holding the button down long enough. It's probably poor form to shout warnings to people when I've got a face full of cheese puffs, but hey, I've got my priorities.

It's been a long time coming. Online play in all its glory and ugliness has been a PC gamer's refuge for years now, and if you've played online with a PC there's nothing in SOCOM you haven't seen before to draw you away from the warm glow of your monitor. But a lot of PS2 owners will enjoy it immensely. If you're looking for a game that requires and rewards the honing of your first person shooter skills, SOCOM is for you. There's not much room for error, though. Casual players will probably be turned off by the level of difficulty, and the game and its network are far from perfect. Even so, Sony has put forth a strong first effort in establishing a beachhead in cyberspace for the mighty PS2.